Page 316 - GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Great Expectations

of his eyes, or so avaricious that he locked up his cake till
the mice ate it, or so determined to go a bird’s-nesting
that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the
neighbourhood. I tell you what I should like. We are so

harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith - would you
mind it?’
‘I shouldn’t mind anything that you propose,’ I
answered, ‘but I don’t understand you.’
‘Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s
a charming piece of music by Handel, called the
Harmonious Blacksmith.’
‘I should like it very much.’
‘Then, my dear Handel,’ said he, turning round as the
door opened, ‘here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to
take the top of the table, because the dinner is of your
providing.’
This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I
faced him. It was a nice little dinner - seemed to me then,
a very Lord Mayor’s Feast - and it acquired additional
relish from being eaten under those independent
circumstances, with no old people by, and with London
all around us. This again was heightened by a certain gipsy
character that set the banquet off; for, while the table was,
as Mr. Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury -

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